Twilight, true love and the potential audience

With the final installment of Twilight opening Friday in theaters, I have theory. I may be wrong, and I’m open to other points of view, but here goes:

Girls who grew up reading the books (they were published between 2005-2008) won’t be as into seeing the final movie as younger girls (ones who are still tweens) or older women (such as women in their 20s and 30s and the tween’s mothers).

The attraction of the Twilight series is the romance of true love, love that breaks taboos (forget the family squabbles of Romeo and Juliet, in Twilight, she’s just a regular gal, he’s a 104-year-old vampire), love that is full of risks (does she dare let him bite her, and forever change her?) and love that has permanent consequences (if you’re undead forever, that’s one way to make sure the love truly lasts forever).

But that kind of romantic notion of love, I’d argue, appeals to the tween and young teen set — call them the pre-heartbreak set — and the older, 20-and 30-somethings and mom-age set (aka, the post-heartbreak set) and not the older teens, who may be somewhere in the middle of their own first romances, filled with the kind of drama and tumult that is so real they don’t need a vampire fairy tale to get in touch with a certain depth of their emotions.

For the pre-heartbreak set, the film can be an emotional foreshadowing — a way to feel something deep and romantic because they have yet to experience it in their lives. For the post-heartbreak set, the film can be a reminder — a way to feel something deep and romantic that they have have felt once before but that is no longer part of their daily lives.